Summer potager

Meet the two most important tools in the potager this summer:

secateurs and string. I’m either cutting back or tie-ing in.

Goodness it’s verdant. Things are exploding into growth. I like to think it’s my great gardening technique. But actually it’s that perfect combination of a very damp spring and my permaculture beds.

Let’s amble down and have a look.

The cucumbers are travelling further than I have this month.

And the courgettes are so productive that I don’t even wait for them to grow into a decent length before I pick.

We have had a harvest of our first coeur de boeuf tomato:

But as usual, the rest are further behind.

And yes I need to sort my foliage. I left for three weeks and came back to find they had romped away.

Wait, you can even see the tomatoes here. Let me try another.

I’m delighted with the upright supports that now host a forest of climbing beans and cucumbers.

Goodness that’s a lush jungle. Padron peppers, other capsicum, basil, beans, broad beans, yet more tomatoes. And ooh look, more cucumbers.

That is the most packed of the beds.

Some had way too much lettuce that bolted. I need to stake the bolting lettuce so the the newly growing lettuce have room to grow.

And elsewhere I have crammed in the dahlias and agastache. And the crocosmia are fine.

I need to go out and tie in the dahlias which have escaped their string prisons.

But doesn’t it look brilliant? So controlled!

Not unlike the tomatoes at all.

Or the beans.